India, May 3 -- In 1856, an eighteen-yearold student named William Henry Perkin, working in a makeshift home laboratory in London, accidentally synthesised the world's first synthetic dye while attempting to produce quinine. He called it mauveine. Queen Victoria wore it to her daughter's wedding. The colour became a craze. Britain had every conceivable advantage. The discovery, the inventor, the empire as a captive market, and the Industrial Revolution's factories still humming. By 1914, Germany produced roughly ninety percent of the world's synthetic dyes. BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, all German. Perkin's own factory had shut decades earlier. Britain invented the technology. Germany took the industry.

The United States and China are replaying ...